Barnes dubs banjo in many styles

People usually think of a musician who lives in a rural community playing traditional music, such as folk, country or bluegrass.

But Danny Barnes says the banjo is a highly adaptable instrument that can be used to play a variety of genres, which he’ll demonstrate Thursday in Benton Harbor at The Livery with the Danny Barnes Duo.

That’s one of the things that attracted Barnes to the instrument.

“The banjo lives in a place and register where not a lot of other (instruments) live,” he says. “So when you sit in with a band and play with other people, you can play a lot of different kinds of music.

“Say if you play the bass, and you sit in with a band that already had a bass player, or you have a guitar and you sit in with a band that already had two guitar players and a piano player, then you are in their range.”

Barnes says that he constantly searches for ways to play the banjo in contemporary settings featuring rock, jazz and punk arrangements.

That search leads Barnes to experiment with genres such as electronic, as well as with the shape of the instrument.

In recent years, Barnes made an instrument that is a cross between a banjo and an electric guitar in order to get a larger sound out of his instrument.

“With the banjo, there are a couple of things that are inherent to the design of it,” he says. “It doesn’t have much sustain. It has a strident sound, kind of like a harpsichord.”

Secondly, it’s hard to play the banjo very loud.

Barnes says that he hit on the idea of putting the solid body of an electric guitar on a banjo.

The modifications allow Barnes to play the banjo with jazz ensembles as well as rock, blues and country.

That kind of versatility plays to Barnes’ musical sensibilities.

Although the instrument is primarily associated with country, folk and bluegrass performers, Barnes says he grew up listening to other kinds of music.

“When I was a kid, I had two brothers who were

really music freaks, so I was always interested in music in a general way,” he says.

Meanwhile, Barnes says, his interest in the banjo came from watching performers play the instrument on television.

“When I was a little kid in the late 1960s, they had these summer replacement shows that would come on,” he says.

The shows were hosted by such people as Johnny Cash and Flip Wilson, and they often had guests who played the banjo. Barnes says he watched the shows and became transfixed by the banjo players’ finger work.

“What attracted me to it is that the strings are out of order on the banjo,” he says. “And it doesn’t seem like those hand motions would make that sound. It sort of looked like a movie that’s been dubbed into English, and it sounded kind of attractive to me.”

Barnes says that he started out playing country tunes because that is the genre most associated with the instrument.

“So I sort of naturally gravitated to that realm,” he says.

However, most of his musician friends were into the progressive rock, punk rock and avant garde jazz that was being made in the 1960s and ’70s.

Barnes started searching for ways to play that kind of music on the banjo. He says that kind of experimentation comes naturally because he is an explorer at heart.

Barnes says that he spent a lot of time trying to figure where he fit musically.

“I really didn’t know if I was supposed to sing, if I was supposed to write or if I was supposed to play or be in someone’s band or be a studio musician,” he says. “I found out that my job in life is to make ideas, to come up with ideas and create things.”

Staff writer Howard Dukes:hdukes@sbtinfo.com574-235-6369

In concert

The Danny Barnes Duo performs at 8 p.m. Thursday at The Livery, 190 Fifth St., Benton Harbor. Admission is $10; $5 for Mug Club members. For more information, call 269-925-8760 or visit liverybrew.com.